


The Death of the Sun

by pallidiflora



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-05
Updated: 2010-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-21 16:15:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallidiflora/pseuds/pallidiflora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation on the nature of stars, legends and humanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Death of the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Genji-boshi is the Japanese name for Rigel, a prominent navigational star.

Hitoshura can never sleep when Kagutsuchi is full. It is still embryonic, cocooned within its shell of Tokyo's ruins, but it still pulses fierce and hot and blue as a pole star, tugging at his blood like an enormous infant moon. It is a single sun in a galaxy unto itself, life-giving, nourishing and unforgiving. Hitoshura imagines it will engulf the Vortex World someday, as all suns will eventually, so he sits just outside Asakusa and tries to see if, by some form of demonic prescience, he can see it expanding as it spins.

Raidou is more concerned with the loss of constellations—he will be, Hitoshura thinks, forever unused to a lack of real sky. Futomimi only vaguely remembers the network of glittering stars that lay above Tokyo, and to him it is no loss (the thought of half-remembered celestial bodies gives him no pleasure at all) but Raidou is not so lucky. Hitoshura is still human enough to notice that he seems adrift, anachronistic; he's missing a compass, both internal and external.

Still, Raidou watches Kagutsuchi with him all the same, standing behind him, silhouetted black against the distant buildings.

"At this time of year," Raidou says, breath fogging white, " _Genji-boshi_ was particularly visible in the sky. I believe so, at least."

They don't chronicle the time in the Vortex World— _a wasteful, ancient vestige of the old people, backwards and unnecessary_ , is what Futomimi says, because the past makes him ache inscrutably—but they all feel the days winding down, growing darker and colder. _Winter_ , Dante would have called it; _fuyu_ , if Hitoshura and Futomimi still used such archaic words. Raidou will probably never stop, but he doesn't say it out loud.

"I think so," Gouto says, curled up at Raidou's feet. "It would be about mid-December now, if my calculations are correct."

Hitoshura no longer remembers how to write _December_ — _juunigatsu_ , the twelfth month, as it was called; kanji with its stroke order seems too archaic to even contemplate, so he doesn't. The concept of months and days and years also seems too complicated, for that matter; he doesn't contemplate that either.

"I don't see how it matters," Hitoshura says. His head is spinning, thundering with tides of blood. He is too drunk on _magatsuhi_ to remember how to write even his own name; he is too drunk to think about the old ways.

The constellations have been swallowed, now only memories of past human conceits (finding familiarity in the swirling vastness of space, this one a drum and that one a kimono sleeve) but Kagutsuchi serves as a navigational star for demons all the same. Raidou watches as its pulse holds Hitoshura in thrall—this boy who no longer remembers the seasons, history or legends.

Raidou feels something for him. Pity, perhaps, or fear.

"Kagutsuchi burned Izanami alive, you know," Raidou says.

"I know." Hitoshura inhales, and his markings glow fierce and hot and blue as a pole star.


End file.
